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Double jeopardy

Oh, those evil doppelgangers and their wonderful place in horror lore. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Twin Peaks, The Thing and now Us, Jordan Peele’s extremely creepy follow up to Get Out. I ask you, what’s creepier than your double trying to slash your neck? Peele knows that it’s the ultimate nightmare, and Us plays upon it with chilling glee.

The film starts with a quote about America having many miles of tunnels underneath its surface, then a quick flashback shot of a C.H.U.D. videotape next to a VCR. A TV plays an advertisement for Hands Across America, and you already have all sorts of subtext before anything even really happens.

When a young girl (Madison Curry) in the same ’80s flashback drifts away from her father at an amusement park and finds herself in a darkened hall of mirrors, Peele immediately states that he’s not playing around with this movie. Prepare to be scared, disturbed and uncomfortable in a good way.

The film then jumps to the present day, where Adelaide and Gabe (Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke) are taking their children, Zora and Jason (Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex) to the beach. It’s the same beach we saw in the flashback and, much to her chagrin, Adelaide was that young girl who ventured into that hall of mirrors. She’s not happy about revisiting the Santa Cruz pier, but the husband and kids really want to, so she takes one for the team.

The family excursion quickly becomes the worst vacation ever, as another family shows up, at night, standing in their driveway. A quick examination of the intruders reveals what the commercials for this movie have already told you—the family in the driveway is a darker, mirror image of the stunned family inside the house. They aren’t coming over to borrow the lawn mower. They intend to kill everybody. Once again, this vacation sucks.

Us has a larger scope than I was expecting and qualifies as one of the better apocalypse movies I’ve ever seen. No question, writer-director Peele has been gobbling up zombie, slasher and isolation horror movies all of his life, and their influences play a significant part in his vision. The movie is a mind-bender, but it’s also an efficient, bareknuckled horror-thriller. In short, it’s the whole package as far as horror movies go.

Nyong’o, whose doppelganger’s name is Red, gets a chance to play two meaty roles here, and she’s all over them. While Adelaide is a strongwilled mom we can’t help but root for, Red is a croaky monster—the only doppelganger that speaks—that comes with an unexpected level of pathetic sadness. She reveals plenty about why she and her evil-twin pals are doing what they do, and none of those secrets will be revealed here.

Peele fans know that the man—in addition to being able to scare the piss out of you—can make you laugh. Us is often as funny as it is scary. Duke is a crackup as the dad who can’t quite get it right when trying to protect his family. In a masterstroke of casting, Tim Heidecker of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! scores as Gabe’s smug friend. He’s the wiseass husband of Kitty (Elisabeth Moss). Moss does things in this movie that will always qualify as some of her best work.

When asked who they are, Red the doppelganger leader replies, “We are Americans.” Us might be scary and funny, but it is also unyieldingly unforgiving condemnation of American missteps, past and present. The movie is a lot of fun, but it’s also a heavy one.

Peele has a revamp of The Twilight Zone coming to CBS All Access soon, and Us plays like a nice primer for more twisty mischief to come. As for his movies, Peele is on a roll. Ω

“i told you, man. There’s only one opening in Slipknot now. We can’t both get it.”

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2Alita: Battle Angel The first time I saw the actual character of Alita in previews (played, in motion captures, by Rosa Salazar), I found her super creepy with her big eyes and ghostly smile. After seeing her in 3D IMAX, I have to say, something about adding that third dimension makes her more visually accessible. She really is an impressive special effects feat, blending in just fine with the 100 percent human actors and special effects backdrops. The movie itself is rather absorbing for a while, a decent story about a more than 300-year-old android trying to fit into a dystopian society, along with having the dullest boyfriend in cinematic history (Keean Johnson). The convoluted plot has something to do with her amnesiac-self trying to remember her battle machine origins (interesting) and trying to become a killer roller derby superstar (not so interesting). This is a project that’s been on James Cameron’s plate for what seems like forever. I can’t remember the first time I saw him attached to the project, but I know it was a long time ago. Then, the whole Avatar thing happened, and Cameron the director got lost in Pandora speaking Navi and doing strange things with horse-like creatures. He went from directing Alita to contributing to its screenplay and production only.

2Captain Marvel It looks like somebody forgot to tell Brie Larson to have fun and let loose in Captain Marvel. Her turn as the title character, a.k.a. Carol Danvers, is one laced with lethargy and bizarre line deliveries. Samuel L. Jackson and an orange tabby seem to be in on the notion of being in escapist fare, but Larson is stiffer than Church the cat on the Creed’s front lawn after his unfortunate encounter with a speeding truck. (Say, is my excitement for the upcoming Pet Sematary reboot evident?) A similar problem plagued Larson in Kong: Skull Island. The Academy Award-winning actress seems to be in her wheelhouse when the budget is low, but seems miscast when the title of her movie is synonymous with blockbuster. She gives off a detached vibe, like she just doesn’t want to really be in the movie. It’s odd. Had the movie around her been really good, her seemingly bored disposition might’ve been forgiven, but Captain Marvel is also riddled with awful special effects and some haphazard storytelling. I went in hoping for a badass movie about Captain Marvel but found myself more intrigued by the subplot involving an up and coming, low-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Nick Fury, played by Jackson. Honestly, the de-aged Jackson in this movie, along with a returning Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), who died in the first Avengers movie, are so good you wish they got their own film.

1The Dirt Jeff Tremaine, director of Jackass films, tries to deliver an actual narrative movie and bombs miserably with this lame biopic of Motley Crue. Based on the book written by members of the band, the film covers the band from formation through their career and makes a mess of the whole thing. For starters, Tommy Lee-lookalike Machine Gun Kelly delivers a bad performance as the iconic drummer, making him into more of a cartoon than he already is. Daniel Webber is an annoying prick as lead singer Vince Neil, who actually is an annoying prick in real life, too, so I guess he gets a pass. Douglas Booth renders bassist Nikki Sixx boring, while Iwan Rheon is the closest thing to any fun as the old, grumpy guitarist Mick Mars. I confess, I’ve never liked the band, and I find their music amateurish and shitty, so liking a movie about them might be a stretch. Still, we are talking some bad wig acting here, and nothing revelatory whatsoever about the group. They had groupies. They did drugs, blah, blah, blah. I never thought I’d see a rock biopic that annoyed me more than Bohemian Rhapsody, but here you go. (Streaming on Netflix.) 3 Greta Isabelle Huppert goes gonzo bonkers in director Neil Jordan’s latest—a silly, standard psycho stalker cinematic run-through made somewhat fun by Huppert’s commitment to nuttiness and costar Chloe Grace Moretz’s excellence at playing freaked out. Moretz is Frances, a young woman living in New York City with her best friend Erica (Maika Monroe). Frances, still dealing with the loss of her mother, finds somebody’s handbag on the subway and decides to return it to its owner. The owner is Greta (Huppert), a piano playing, solitary French woman who immediately invites Frances into her life, and they develop a fast mother/daughter bond. Greta provides the motherly friendship Frances craves. Erica cries weird about the whole relationship, but Frances persists, even helping Greta adopt a dog, and opting to hang with Greta instead of friends her own age. This is a horror-thriller, so it’s fairly obvious going into the theater that the Greta connection isn’t going to work out for the good. The cards are flipped early in the movie, and Greta reveals herself as a real kook, and the mother/daughter bonding goes south super-fast, devolving into Greta going into full stalker mode. The plotting is similar to other stalker films like Single White Female and One Hour Photo.

4How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World The tale of Toothless, the freaking adorable animated dragon, comes to a close (maybe) with How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, the third chapter in what producers are calling a trilogy. If the story continues from this chapter, you won’t get any complaints from me. I think the dragon beat could very entertainingly go on with this franchise. Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), now the chief of his Viking tribe, and dragon buddy Toothless happen upon another Night Fury dragon, this one a female, and Toothless is justifiably smitten. After a first date that involves some hilarious show off dancing, the two hit it off, and Hiccup might find himself staring down a future life without Toothless in it. The movie clocks in at 104 minutes, but it feels more like 60. Director Dean DeBlois, who directed all three Dragon films, gets credit for making the proceedings breezy—and never boring. Thankfully, the great Jonsi of Sigur Ros provides another terrific song for the soundtrack.

3Never Grow Old Emile Hirsch and John Cusack, two actor’s whose careers have seen better times, star in this dark Western about a religious town that’s visited by the devil. The devil would be Dutch Albert (Cusack), a sleazy gunslinger businessman who arrives in an old frontier town that has outlawed liquor and promptly opens a saloon. The mayhem that follows him has a body count, and the local undertaker, Patrick (Hirsch), starts making a fine profit off of all the kills. Feeling conflicted over the fact that more money for his family also means a lot of people and friends dying, Patrick starts having thoughts about rising up against Dutch, but many will die before Patrick works up the gumption to make a move. Both actors are very good here, with Cusack delivering his best work since his excellent turn in Love & Mercy. He’s played bad guys before, but this guy is really bad, and Cusack seizes the opportunity to let the evil out. Hirsch is decent as the good guy who needs to buck up and do the right thing. Both actors have been doing duty in subpar movies of late, like John Travolta, Nicolas Cage and Bruce Willis, so it’s been awhile since they’ve done anything of note. Hopefully, their strong turns here will get them back on track. (Available for rent on iTunes and Amazon.com during a limited theatrical release.)